Kukulcania egg sac

Cyanea

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i have no idea what species of Kukulcania this is but my father caught a male and i put him in there and apparently they mated (although i don't know if spiders can produce egg sacs without mating :confused:) a couple of weeks later she made this egg sac, she even put dirt on it :eek:
i know there's people here who have kept these spiders, so maybe someone knows how long do the eggs take to hatch and what do i do when that happens, because i've never had a spider lay eggs before :confused:



 

pitbulllady

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K. hibernalis eggsacs usually take around two months to hatch, but I'm not sure that this is a Kukulcania species. They eyes don't look quite right. Spiders in this genus don't have any forward-facing eyes above the chelicerae like this spider seems to have, but have a cluster of small eyes on top of the carapace like a tarantula. Maybe I'm seeing two shiny reflective spots that aren't eyes, but they look like eyes from that angle in that second pic. Maybe if you could take a pic from directly on top of the spider it would be easier to tell if this is a Kulculcania or not, but it looks more like some sort of Lycosid. The eggsac doesn't seem Lycosid, though, unless there are species that do not carry their eggsacs around with them.

pitbulllady
 

Cyanea

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hey, thanks for your reply
it's definitely not a lycosid, for sure
i think it's a Kukulcania because i've asked before (in this board) about these kind of spiders and people have always told me they're Kukulcania, I'm also thinking it is because she makes cribellate silk and her characteristics fit with the description of Kuculcania, but i could take a picture like you said and post it, because i'm not that familiar with these kind of spiders

and if it is Kukulcania it's definitely not hibernalis because the male is the same color as the female and bigger than a K. hibernalis male (from what i've seen in pictures)
 

Cyanea

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here are the pics, and you're right about the shinning spots, i don't know if they're the eyes, but sometimes they do shine when i use a flashlight to look at the spider, look at this pic:

that was just the flash though

and here are the others, that was the best i could do with my camera


this is the best shot i could take of the eyes
 

pitbulllady

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That is NOT a Kukulcania sp.. All the members of this species have a distinctly pointed carapace at the front, and an eye cluster up on top just like a tarantula's, with no forward-facing eyes like this spider has. It may very well be a Filistid or Cribellate spider, of which there are many genuses and species, but it's not in THAT genus. Here's a pic of one of my females, in which you can see that the eyes are clustered more or less in a circle up on top of the carapace, and that the carapace is rather pointed and juts out a bit almost like the prow of a boat. Every pic I've seen of known/confirmed Kukulcania spiders has had these features.

Also, in every known species the males are a distinctly different color from the females. They aren't necessarily smaller, though; even though they are typically thinner, they still can have an even larger leg span than the females.

pitbulllady
 

Cyanea

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oh i see, yeah the eye arrangement from your spider is very different from mine, they do look kind of similar otherwise, now i wonder what kind of spider it is...
thanks a lot for the info!
 

pitbulllady

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oh i see, yeah the eye arrangement from your spider is very different from mine, they do look kind of similar otherwise, now i wonder what kind of spider it is...
thanks a lot for the info!
I don't know, but I'd be pretty interested in finding out myself. The front of the prosoma on your spider looks very Lycosid, but there's that issue with the eggsac. I don't know of any Lycosid that doesn't carry around its eggsac in some fashion-not saying they don't exist, but I'm not aware of them. I've also never seen a K.hibernalis cover their eggsac with dirt or bits of leaves; mine always have pristine cotton-ball eggsacs, and so do those I've seen in the "wild". They seem very meticulous not to let anything cling to the sac and tend it faithfully. This is the only time that I've ever seen a spider of this species behave with defensive aggression; they will most definately try to bite anything that messes with that eggsac and especially with newly-hatched 'slings, though after about three weeks that intense protectiveness wanes. I've got a huge female on my desk at school whose sac hatched three weeks ago. When it first hatched, she'd try to attack my finger through the plastic of her enclosure, but now I can manipulate the babies with the tip of a pencil without her going ballistic. At any other time these are as docile and calm as many New World tarantulas. I can't really say the same about any of my Wolf spiders, t hough!

pitbulllady
 

Cyanea

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wow, that's pretty interesting about your Kuculcania, they seem to be nice spiders, maybe one day i'll find one :)
and i agree about the wolf spiders, i have one right now and she bit me already and she seems to be kind of agressive sometimes, but she's very pretty and i love how she hunts :D
and about the other spider, i don't know how will i know what kind of spider she is, because the only way i know how to identifiy spiders is with keys and that's pretty hard... plus i don't know where i can get spider identification keys where i live :?
and the spider must be dead too...
 
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